_Jebens Transplanter._--This is an implement for lifting seedlings without injuring the rootlets or disturbing the soil around them. It is noticed at page 79 favourably: since that time (1878) it has been used more or less in all Tea districts. I have seen many opinions both for and against it. I believe the truth is it works very well in light soil, and with smallish seedlings, but does not answer in hard soil or with plants above 2-1/2 feet high. Where the soil and size of seedlings are suitable, it certainly saves much of the check experienced otherwise by transplants. I know of no other peculiar implements for Tea cultivation. The greatest expense connected with cultivation is, naturally, opening the soil or digging; the spade is never used in India and would not answer. Coolies dig with a kodali, a thing something like a spade, with the handle set at right angles to the blade. Could we dispense with this, and cultivate between the lines of Tea with ploughs of any suitable pattern, whether worked by steam or animal power, an enormous saving would be effected. I am sure the _whole_ space between two lines of Tea can never be so done, round each and every bush the soil _must_ be opened by hand; but the centre space, say about 2-1/2 to 3 feet, could, I am convinced, be so worked, and I think it is only a question of time when it will be so treated. The planting community are gradually appreciating the fact that something _may_ be done in this way. The following appeared in the _Tea Gazette_, end of 1881, _re_ ploughing by steam:-- PLOUGHING _v._ HOEING. Dear Sir,--I am glad to see by the letter of a “Man in the Kundah” that some managers have taken up the idea of ploughing instead of hoeing. It is an idea which I have been dinning into the ears of Tea planters ever since I saw a Tea garden. Mr. Lyell deserves credit, and so will everyone who assists to introduce ploughing instead of hoeing. The saving of labour would be immense. The gentlemen who are interested in the subject will be glad to learn that I wrote home last month to several leading agricultural machinery people asking the fullest particulars as to _steam ploughing machinery_, with a view to seeing how far suitable it would be for Tea cultivation. As soon as all my information arrives, and I have thought the matter out, I will give the planting community my opinion. I have, as far as I am personally concerned, already formed it, and am confident that at no very distant date the steam plough will supersede the _dhangar_ or other hand labour. But of course I must make out a strong case for it, or my opinions would be supposed to arise from a professional predilection for machinery. F. Siligoorie, _27th November, 1882_. Again, “Nil Desperandum,” quoted above, continues:--